“I’ll look into them,” says Pez. “Anything else?”
“Alistair is trying to trace the source of the game phones, which might be an interesting angle. Also, there is a new clue for today: ‘All the sea farmers know it was her favorite place to stand.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
He thinks about it for a while.
“Something about the sea,” he says. “And your mother, presumably. The beach, maybe?”
“Our mother hated the beach,” I say. “She was too pale and she hated all the sand in her clothes and all the dumb, poor unfortunates arrayed on beach towels and reeking of sunscreen.”
Even as I talk, I get an inkling in the back of my brain: some old memory, some wry joke that our mother used to make. But I can’t hold on to it. Even as it starts to shimmer into focus, the memory fades into an aggravating phantasm.
I spend the next couple hours dealing with the heads of various departments. People seem nervous around me, given what’s happened the past few days, and I guess they should be. I tell Peter to refer all the press to Angelo Marino, and I avoid the internet, which is blowing up with news about the elevator crash that killed Henley. I’m amused to find that we are being painted in the same light as the Kennedys: a noble, aristocratic East Coast family dealing with unimaginable tragedy. And I’m relieved to discover they are using flattering pictures of me instead of paparazzi trash. America is a visual country.
I have a dark, cynical thought that all of this might even help the Nylo brand. We provide family entertainment and our family is breaking apart.
I call the marketing department. Chloe Taney picks up.
“Would you mind doing some analytics about how we should best spin the fact that we have lost Prescott and Henley?” I ask her. “Should we try and minimize the tragedy or should we lean into it for maximum brand awareness? I can’t think of any similar incidents with similar companies, but I have a feeling we can leverage this to our advantage, or at least minimize some of the bad publicity that could give our brand the taint of tragedy.”
Chloe sputters her agreement, bowled over by my coldness.
“Of course, of course,” she says.
She won’t be able to keep my request a secret. Soon everyone at Nylo will hear about how I’m capitalizing on death. Some people will be shocked and horrified, but mostly this will remind people why I am in charge. How I never crumble in the face of a crisis. How I never stop putting the company first.
And secretly they’ll be relieved. They’ll keep backing me, no matter what happens. You want a monster at the top, to crush all the other potential monsters who mistakenly think they can match the depth of the top monster’s creative malice in the service of the corporation.
I work through the afternoon, periodically racking my brain for memories of our mother, of our mother playing Sea Farmers, of our mother and the sea. I try to come up with a reason why Bernard and Gabriella might remember something about her that Alistair and I don’t. They were so much younger than we were when she died. It doesn’t make any sense.
At four o’clock, the department heads roll into my office. Peter lets me know the Playqueen team has arrived, too, and are waiting upstairs. “Keep them sweating,” I say.
My call to Chloe Taney has done its work. The department heads are all terrified of me, terrified of the tragedy itself, terrified of my response to it so far. They are terrified of the fact that I am insisting that we still hold the meeting with Playqueen in my dead father’s conference room, where we always hold high-level meetings.
After we go over the internal reports and briefs and charts (everything is ostensibly in order), we ride the elevator up one flight together in silence.
Playqueen has come in force. They’ve brought a team of ten, many of whom are lawyers and tax people, but it looks like they have way more execs from the company than they need. I wonder if that means they’re going to make this difficult for me. Which I actually find to be a relief. If they were literally trying to murder us all, I assume they would be more low-key here in this meeting.
“Listen,” I say, as soon as we are all sitting down and everyone has chosen from the cake, pie, pineapple empanadas, and coffee that we often serve at afternoon meetings. “I know you guys don’t want Nylo Corporation to buy you, strip you for parts, and remove everything that makes you unique. You think you want control. But I am offering immortality. There is no apotheosis in this business beyond greater distribution and a bigger marketing profile. Our offer represents a commitment to your mission. We see what you are trying to do, we get it, and we want to make your dreams come true, not just for America, but for the whole world. Right?”
The CEO of Playqueen is a giant bearded man named Salmon Chase Capaldi. He measures my words, looking as often at Angelo Marino as at me. I try to stay open-minded.
“We are going to do the deal, obviously, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it,” he finally says. “I am frankly surprised you still wanted to meet with us today. Frankly, and I hope you don’t mind my bluntness, how can anybody here be sure that you are thinking clearly? I remember when my mother died. I almost joined the Marines. Can you believe that? I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. Do you know what the fuck you are doing?”
He has
